Carrie-Anne Moss Is the One

The star of the Matrix trilogy talks about sex scenes, extreme pain, and her friendships with cows.

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It's not as if she's totally ignored. Carrie-Anne Moss is the subject of a respectable number of heavy-breathing fan Web sites, has logged a few minutes on Jay Leno's couch, has signed plenty of autographs. But compared with other Matrix phenomena — her stoic costar Keanu Reeves and those much-imitated slow-motion high kicks, say — the Canadian actress seems kind of overshadowed. A crime! After four years and a handful of other movies — including the brilliant retrograde murder mystery Memento — Moss returns as Trinity, the heroine of this month's The Matrix: Reloaded and this fall's The Matrix: Revolutions. It's time to pay her the proper respect.

The long-awaited sex sequence in The Matrix: Reloaded takes place in a cave close to the earth's molten core in the subterranean city of Zion. According to the script, the shots of Moss and Keanu Reeves grappling are intercut with feverish tribal dancing in which "sweat, spit, and mud fly from the growing fury with the rhythmic slap of naked feet against wet clay."

Which certainly sounds fun to us, but apparently was not so pleasant for at least one of the participants. "I'm definitely not a big fan of that part of the work," Moss says. "I'm such a private person, and sexuality is such a private thing. A sex scene is much harder than a fight scene. It's one thing to say, 'Kick higher,' but 'Kiss harder' — that's just crazy."

It could have been worse. She once did a topless scene in a straight-to-video dog called The Soft Kill. "It was horrific," she says. "I felt like I was filling some kind of nudity quota that week." And she duly performed toe-sucking duties in a scene with Jeremy Piven (Moss was the receiver) in the 2000 mob comedy The Crew, an experience she has since blocked out: "Is it strange that I totally can't remember it?"

She has yet to suppress the memory of the first time she kissed Reeves. The Wachowski brothers — the Matrix directing duo — ordered a screen test to see if their stars had chemistry. Moss walked in and said, "Hi, I'm Carrie-Anne." Reeves said, "Hi, I'm Keanu." And then they kissed. It was significantly more laid-back than the most recent kiss, the one you'll see in the new movie. "There were a lot of people around, and hot lights, and it was kind of grueling," she says. "I love seeing a movie with a really good sex scene, but when it's you doing it, it feels kinda weird."

She was born early in the morning on an August day in the summer of love in Vancouver, British Columbia. By all accounts, she was an outgoing, happy child. Her earliest memory is of bright-yellow smiley faces on the family place mats.

Her mother named her after the song "Carrie-Anne," by the Hollies. It was a last-minute change. She almost got named Jenny Rebecca, after a Barbra Streisand hit of a previous summer. A disaster narrowly averted.

She's been "tipsy" just four or five times in her whole life. As a kid, she was never sent to the principal's office. Even as a teenager, even though her mom raised her as a single parent, even though she didn't meet her dad until she was fourteen, she wasn't a rebel. Once, though, early on, she turned herself in for an egregious crime. "I shoplifted," she says. "I was about five years old, and I took a candy from a store. We paid for three of them, but I took four, and I went home and cried. My mom took me back, and I paid for the missing piece."

3. The secret to her character: Think Dirty Harriet.

"I've never been interested in action movies," she says. "Definitely not interested in sci-fi. So when we were on location, I decided to watch Clint Eastwood. I hadn't seen his movies since I was a kid and went with my dad and my brother. But I remembered how still he was. Still but full of strength. I knew I needed to tap into that because I'm not a very still person. And I knew the brothers really wanted that quiet intensity for Trinity. It's about her eyes, her voice, the way she moves. Or doesn't move. And I watched Clint and thought, Okay, Trinity can be still and still very powerful."

4. She is not into leather.

It was polyvinyl or patent leather, depending on the scene. Polyvinyl was easier because the leather was so heavy, it hurt her body — especially her arms and her breasts. It was sweaty, too: beads of sweat no matter whether she was standing still or running or hog-tied on a spit. The costume had some benefits, though. When she'd put it on and then put the glasses on, her whole being would change. She would stand straighter. Feel tougher. Her friends, like Maria Bello from Coyote Ugly, would see her in the outfit and say, "Who are you?"

5. She does not like to watch.

The first time she ever saw herself on the big screen was at an early private showing of The Matrix. She cried through the entire movie. "It was not a fun experience," she says. "It was so unnatural looking. I'm a very simple person. I don't use computers, and all those special effects go against my natural instincts. It was just shocking to see myself so...out there."

Watching herself in later movies like Memento and Chocolat was a little easier, mostly because her characters were much closer to the person she is in life. At least they existed in only one realm of reality. But even watching herself in those movies felt odd. "I just can't stand the sound of my voice sometimes, or how my face looks," she says. "There are always a few times at every premiere when I just have to cover my eyes when I'm up there."

6. She does not understand those who do like to watch.

She has seen The Matrix, but not like some people have seen The Matrix. People watch this film over and over again, and she can't quite understand it. "This friend of mine's son has seen the DVD about 250 times. Can you please help the kid find something else to do? Anything! Someone needs to take the movie away from that boy."

7. The Matrix is a pain in her thigh.

The only thing more painful than having your toes sucked by strangers or watching yourself on the big screen: those glorious stop-motion, midair ninja kicks. She still bears the pain. "These muscles right here," she says, tracing imaginary lines from her inner thighs to her hips. "These got it the worst."

Week two of rehearsals on the first sequel, Moss injured her leg. They had put her on a wire (she was always on a wire), and she landed wrong. She misheard the cues from the wire people, masters of movie aeronautics but Chinese speakers all, and she dropped a little too soon, a little too hard. For six weeks, she couldn't walk on the leg, and she was, in a word, freaking. Hundred-million-dollar movie franchises don't wait for hobbling actresses from middle-class families from Vancouver, she figured. "I remember going somewhere around that time," she says. "I was on crutches, and a guy said, 'Hey, my girlfriend just auditioned for your part.'" Fortunately, the guy was full of shit.

She recently met Jennifer Garner, the star of Alias. "I just wanted to hold her hand and say, 'You understand.' We compared notes about which muscles hurt the worst when you do this sort of action work. Sometimes I'd have to have a cry before I'd do anything. Jennifer seemed to know exactly what I was talking about."

...Not that Keanu sympathized.

8. "He'd call me lazy. If I sat down and tried to take a break, he'd say, 'What are you doing?' And I'd say, 'I'm not training now, because it's a break.' But he was training all the time when he wasn't working. Just getting ready for scenes or doing the moves or working with one of the trainers. And he'd say to me, 'Well, why don't you ask them if you can train?' It kinda drove me crazy."

She gets all heavy about The Matrix.

9. The movie, she says, represents "the veil of illusion on life being broken. People tell you the world looks a certain way. Parents tell you how to think. Schools tell you how to think. TV. Religion. And then at a certain point, if you're lucky, you realize you can make up your own mind. Nobody sets the rules but you. You can design your own life."

10. She likes a good juicy steak in spite of herself.

While filming Chocolat in France, the boredom between shooting days was stultifying. So she walked. Walked with the cows. "I would just set out into the pastures for hours, and I'd end up hanging out with the cows. And they started to feel like my dogs to me. I got to know them really well and eventually decided it was weird to be having this relationship with these cows and still be eating meat. I quit steaks for a while, but it's a hard habit to break."

11. She can drive like Hal Needham.

A scene in The Matrix: Reloaded calls for Moss to race a modified Cadillac along a crowded freeway and then brake into a "sliding 90," in which the car travels sideways à la Starsky & Hutch, directly into the camera.

The Wachowskis are like that. Anything a stuntwoman can do, a famous actor can do splashier. Of course, if Moss missed the mark, a bunch of crew people just outside the shot would have been eating metal.

To get the shot, Moss also had to perform a move called the Juicy Lift — a complicated maneuver she learned in stunt-driving school that involves yanking the parking brake and turning the steering wheel just so. Take one: Moss nailed it. She did not enjoy this, either. "From now on," she says, "I'm happy to stick to my Volvo."

12. If she could live her life backwards, à la Memento...

She would be very, very old. An enlightened grandmother. At home in nature. Simplifying on every front. Sailing toward the horizon with her husband, Steve. A total vegan. Dogs on the bed. Money in the bank. A star on Hollywood Boulevard, if only for the kitsch factor. Africa. An Italian villa. An Oscar on the mantel, if only for the kids to play with during the annual Oscar party. The role of a lifetime. The birth of her second child. A film with Altman. A film with Julianne Moore. A film in which she plays the daughter of Meryl Streep and Robert Duvall. Breaking the box-office records all over again with The Matrix: Revolutions. Breaking all the box-office records with The Matrix: Reloaded. The birth of her first child. A month in Hawaii, sunbaked on the beach, sucking mango and doing yoga. A really great lunch with freshly baked breads. Answering annoying questions from an Esquire writer.